Shattered Glass
by Angel Monroe
Summary: Takes place after the shotgun and Logan's car have a conversation. Spoilers 2.01. LoVe. Oneshot.


**Shattered Glass  
**by Angel Monroe

_Disclaimer: I gave my soul to God for the book I'm writing. I have nothing left to barter for Veronica Mars. In other words, unfortunately, I don't own it. _

_A/N: This takes place after the shotgun blast through Logan's car. Kinda fluffy, kinda not. LoVe pairing. Hope you enjoy. _

Bewildered, the two stared at each other for a moment as the sound of a motorcycle faded in the distance. Brushing a piece of glass from her hair, Logan ran a hand down the side of her face. "Are you--?"

"Veronica!"

Startled by the shout through the sudden silence of the night, they craned their necks to see Keith Mars bounding down the front walk, panic written in his every movement and gesture.

Logan sat up quickly, putting some distance between himself and the man's daughter, and then instantly regretted it.

"I'm alright, Dad," Veronica assured her father, using his arm to gingerly extricate herself from the back seat. Her heels crackled on the glass-strewn sidewalk. "We're not hurt."

"Speak for yourself." She turned at Logan's raspy words as he stepped out behind her. Worried, she ran a hand over his back only to pull away in alarm when her fingers pricked something sharp.

"Oh god, Logan," she gasped, turning him around to see that several shards of glass hadn't fallen loose from his shirt, some stained a watery tinge of red that made the bile rise in her throat. "Come on, let's get you inside."

Five minutes later, Logan lay on his stomach on Veronica's bed. His shirt was in pieces on the floor, the product of a slow, methodic surgery as she'd tried not to disturb the glass that had broken skin. Nothing was very deep, but it bled and it stung. With a washcloth and a bowl of warm water, she slowly and tenderly began to separate glass and flesh.

"This is going to hurt," she warned in a whisper, unsure of why. "Try not to move." She closed her ears to the mumbled expletives he spoke into the pillow, but when his groan was followed by an exaggerate jerk, her hand stilled nervously. "I'm sorry."

"No, I'm okay," he whispered through clenched teeth, carefully controlled. "Keep going. I've had worse."

Veronica bit her lip, trapping words of unwanted sympathy: _I know_. She could see it, trace the map of it in scars on his back. _Cigarette burns and broken noses._ That's what Trina had said. _And apparently belt buckles too. _Dipping the washcloth in the warm water, she ran it gently over the planes of his shoulders, trying her best to ignore the pale pink lines she knew could not have been accidental.

"A broken bottle," he said out of nowhere, and she could have sworn he read minds.

"What?"

"The scar you're tracing," he replied, craning his neck to look up at her, "it's from a broken bottle. Freshman year. My first bout of public drunkenness to make it into the papers. "

Looking down, Veronica pulled her free hand away from the spot she'd been absently stroking, a jagged line on his left shoulder. "A bar fight?" she asked hopefully, though she knew that wishful thinking was just compassionate denial.

He laughed mirthlessly, resting his head back on the pillow. "No, that was after I got home from the bar fight."

She didn't say anything, knowing that to say, "I'm sorry," would be inadequate and after-the-fact. Aaron was already in jail, and that was all the retribution she could offer him. Instead, she carefully plucked another shard of glass from his skin and wiped the blood away.

"You know, you saved my life," she said finally, bridging the silence. "Back in the car, throwing yourself over me."

"It was…"

"Don't you dare say it was nothing," she interrupted. "It was brave and selfless and I'm trying to say thank you, so just accept it and move on."

Logan's shoulders shook with light laughter and then froze with the pain. His voice thick, he said, "I was just going to say, 'It was instinct.'" She could hear the smirk in it.

Her lips twitched at that, reluctant to smile while her white washcloth was slowly turning red. "Again, thank you."

"I meant it, you know." Another comment out of left field, and she was having a hard time keeping up.

"Meant what?"

"When I said that I'm in love with you," he replied, and though his voice lowered conspiratorially it was tender and honest and she wished she could see his eyes. "I wasn't just trying to get past second base. You know that, right?"

Her smile reached her eyes and the ceiling and the sky, rose-colored washcloth be damned. "Yes, Logan. I know."

Silence stretched between them again until the last shard of glass lay in her wastebasket and she had no more band-aids to use. Still, she traced the little pink lines until his breathing evened out. Standing with her red-tinted water and a bottle of peroxide, she leaned down and placed the lightest of kisses on his temple.

"I love you too, you know," she whispered to his sleeping form and then walked into the kitchen to help her dad with dinner.

As her footsteps moved away, Logan's eyes opened slowly and a small smile touched his lips. "Yes, Veronica," he sighed to the empty room, "I know."


End file.
